Iceberg Slim

Robert Beck (born Robert Lee Maupin; August 4, 1918 – April 28, 1992), better known as Iceberg Slim, was an American pimp who subsequently became an influential author among a primarily African-American readership. Beck's novels were adapted into movies, and the imagery and tone of Beck's fiction has been acknowledged as an influence by several rap musicians, including Ice T, Ice Cube, and Iceberg Slimm, whose names are homages to Beck.

Early life

Robert Maupin was born in Chicago, Illinois. He spent his childhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Rockford, Illinois, until he returned to Chicago. When his mother was abandoned by his father, she established a beauty shop and worked as a domestic to support both of them in Milwaukee.^[1] In his autobiography, Maupin expressed gratitude to his mother for not abandoning him, as well. She earned enough money working in her salon to give her son the privileges of a middle-class life such as a college education, which at that time was not an option for the average person.^[2]

Slim attended Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama (it has been stated that he attended Tuskegee University at the same time as black author Ralph Ellison^[3]), but having spent time in the "street culture", he soon began bootlegging and was expelled as a result. After his expulsion, his mother encouraged him to become a criminal lawyer so that he could make a legitimate living while continuing to work with the street people he was so fond of, but Maupin, seeing the pimps bringing women into his mother's beauty salon, was far more attracted to the model of money and control over women that pimping provided.^[3]

Pimping

According to his memoir, Pimp, Slim started pimping at 18 and continued that pursuit until age 42. The book claimed that during his career, he had over 400 women, both black and white, working for him. He said he was known for his frosty temperament, and at 6'2" and 180 lbs, he was indeed slim, and he had a reputation for staying calm in sticky situations, thus earning the street name Iceberg Slim. When verbal instruction and psychological manipulation failed to keep his women in line, he beat them with wire hangers; in his autobiography he fully concedes he was a ruthless, vicious man.^[4]

Slim had been involved with several other popular pimps, one of them Albert "Baby" Bell,^[5] a man born in 1899 who had been pimping for decades and had a Duesenberg and a bejeweled pet ocelot.^[5] Another pimp, who had gotten Slim hooked on heroin, went by the name of "Satin"^[5] and was a major drug figure in Eastern America.^[4]

Slim was noted for being able to effectively conceal his emotions throughout his pimping career, something he said he learned from Baby Bell: "A pimp has gotta know his whores, but not let them know him; he's gotta be god all the way."^[4]

Writing

In 1961, Maupin left prison after serving 10 months of solitary confinement, in a Cook County jail. He believed he was too old for the life of pimping, unable to compete with younger, more ruthless pimps. In an interview with the Washington Post, he said he retired, "because I was old. I did not want to be teased, tormented and brutalized by young whores."^[3]

In 1961, Maupin moved to Los Angeles and changed his name to Robert Beck, taking the last name of the man his mother was married to at the time.^[2] He met Betty Shue, who became his common-law wife and the mother of his three daughters, while he was working as an insecticide salesman. Betty encouraged Beck to write the story of his life as a novel, and they began sporadically writing some draft chapters. According to her, a white writer, whom Beck would later only refer to as "the Professor", became interested in writing Beck's life story, and Beck became convinced that the man was trying to steal their idea for himself, so they cut him out of the deal and finished it without him.^[1][5][6] Bentley Morris of Holloway House recognized the merit of Pimp, and it was published in 1967.^[1][3][7]

The hip-hop writer Mark Skillz wrote that when Beck began work on Pimp, "he made two promises to himself: no glamorizing his former life and no snitching."^[5] Hip hop artist Fab 5 Freddy, a friend of Beck's, gave this account of the literary technique of Pimp: "Many of Bob's friends were still alive when he wrote that book. So he changed all of their names and descriptions. 'Baby' Bell became 'Sweet' Jones, his best friend 'Satin' became 'Glass Top' and he created composite characters of some of his former 'employees'."^[5]

Reviews of Pimp were mixed. Although "he found his book being shelved next to other black authors of the angry 60's like Eldridge Cleaver's Soul On Ice and Malcolm X's The Autobiography of Malcolm X", Beck's vision was considerably bleaker than most other black writers' of the time. His work tended to be based on his personal experiences in the criminal underworld, and revealed a world of seemingly bottomless brutality and viciousness. His was the first insider look into the world of black pimps, to be followed by a half-dozen pimp memoirs by other writers.

In 1973, Hollie West questioned in The Washington Post whether societal changes and the women's movement would soon render the outlook expressed in Pimp redundant: "The Iceberg Slim of yesteryear is considered an anachronism to the young dudes now out there on the block trying to hustle. They say he is crude and violent, overlooking his staggering gift of the gab. Iceberg acknowledges that pimping has changed because 'women have changed'. The advent of women's lib, changing sexual mores, general affluence in this society and widespread use of drugs by pimps to control prostitutes have made an impact."^[2][8][9]

Pimp sold very well, mainly among black audiences. By 1973, it had been reprinted 19 times and had sold nearly 2 million copies.^[10] Pimp was eventually translated into German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and Greek. Nevertheless, the book's audience remained predominantly black.

Following Pimp, Beck wrote several more novels, an autobiography, and a story collection. He sold over six million books prior to his death in 1992,^[3][7] making him one of the best-selling African-American writers.

Recordings

In 1976, Iceberg Slim released the album Reflections, in which he recited passages from his autobiography over a funky musical backing supplied by the Red Holloway Quartet.^[11] The album, produced by David Drozen, was initially released on ALA records and reissued in 2008 by Uproar Entertainment. Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Victor W. Valdivia wrote: "For those who aren't easily offended, this album will be spellbinding. Slim's skills as a storyteller cannot be overstated; even at his crudest, he still spins riveting yarns."^[12] Valdivia praised the record for "the mixture of street smarts and the intellectual and emotional depth shown here", which, he said, was often lacking in Iceberg Slim's followers.^[12]

Film adaptations

Slim's second novel, Trick Baby, was adapted as a an eponymous 1972 movie, directed by Larry Yust^[13] and was produced independently for $600,000, with an unknown cast. Universal Pictures acquired the film for $1,000,000 and released it in 1973, to a considerable amount of Iceberg Slim fanfare; the movie grossed $11,000,000 at the US box office. The New York Times praised the film for its depiction of race relations and the friendship between two con men, set "in the grimier reaches of Philadelphia".^[14]

As of 2015, and adaptation of Mama Black Widow, Beck's critically acclaimed story of a sharecropper family's migration from Mississippi to Chicago during the early 1930s, is in development with Marshall Tyler attached to direct from an adapted screenplay written by Tyler and William De Los Santos. Chris Hanley and Dave Mortell are producing.^[15]

A movie adaptation of Pimp has been in development for some time. In the 1990s, there were announcements of a movie to be directed by Bill Duke and starring Ice Cube. In 2009, television executive producer Rob Weiss, of the HBO show Entourage, and Mitch Davis purchased the film rights to produce Pimp.^[16]

Personal life

As previously stated, after his release from prison in 1961, Beck met Betty Shue, who became his common-law wife and the mother of his three daughters (Melody, Misty and Camille), while he was working as an insecticide salesman. Shue encouraged Beck to write his life story and helped him write drafts.^[5]

Beck married Diane Millman Beck in 1982.^[5][7]

Death

According to Beck's widow, Diane Millman Beck, Beck's final years were plagued by financial worries and deteriorating health. Beck suffered from diabetes and became increasingly reclusive. He died from liver failure on April 28, 1992, aged 73.^[5][7] In 2005, Diane Millman Beck and Beck's three daughters from his previous relationship, Melody, Misty and Camille, filed suit against Holloway House for back payment of royalties. They claimed in their suit that Robert Beck died penniless.^[5]

Influence

Scottish author Irvine Welsh gave this estimate of his literary merit: "Iceberg Slim did for the pimp what Jean Genet did for the homosexual and thief and William Burroughs did for the junky: he articulated the thoughts and feelings of someone who had been there. The big difference is that they were white."^[2]

Academia

Welsh adds that a Harvard University course has studied Pimp as a "transgressive novel".^[2]

Comedy

• Comedian Dave Chappelle has used the life of Iceberg Slim and the world of his book Pimp as a parable for his own success.^[17]

• Eddie Murphy's character Velvet Jones, from Saturday Night Live, has been described as a spoof of Iceberg Slim's character.^[18]

Films

• In 1970, incarcerated Bay Area pimp, Robert Poole was influenced by Beck’s Pimp and proceeded to write a screenplay about his life entitled The Mack and his Pack. The film was released under the title The Mack (1973), starring Max Julien and Richard Pryor.^[5]
• Ice-T produced the documentary Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp (2012), told through talking-head admirers,^[19] including Chris Rock, Snoop Dogg, Ice-T, Henry Rollins, Quincy Jones, and others. The film was directed by Jorge Hinojosa and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2012.^[20][21]

Literature

• Author Donald Goines acknowledged the strong influence of Beck's Pimp when he created his urban fiction set in a black milieu. Goines was also published by Bentley Morris of Holloway House.^[5]

• Peter A. Muckley published Iceberg Slim: The Life as Art (2003), a critical study of the fiction of Iceberg Slim.^[22]

Music

Slim is an important influence on hip-hop artists. For example:

• Rappers, such as Ice Cube, Ice-T, Iceberg Slimm, and Pittsburgh Slim, adopted their names in part from reading the author.
• Many of the current musical references to pimp culture, for example in the work of Snoop Dogg and Too Short, can be traced back to Iceberg Slim.
• Iceberg Slim's last book, Doom Fox (written in 1978 but not published until 1998), contains an introduction written by Ice-T.
• Ice-T's third album, The Iceberg (1989) is another major homage.
• Rapper Jay-Z has referred to himself as "Iceberg Slim" in his song "Who You Wit" (1997).

Bibliography

Iceberg Slim's writings include both fiction and nonfiction:^[23][24]

• Pimp: The Story of My Life (1967, Holloway House), memoir
• Trick Baby: The Biography of a Con Man (1967, Holloway House), novel
• Mama Black Widow: A Story of the South's Black Underworld (1969, Holloway House), novel
• The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim: Robert Beck's Real Story (1971, Holloway House), autobiography
• Long White Con: The Biggest Score of His Life (1977, Holloway House), novel
• Death Wish: A Story of the Mafia (1977, Holloway House), novel
• Airtight Willie & Me (1985, Holloway House), story collection
• Doom Fox (written 1978, published posthumously 1998), novel
• Shetani's Sister (published posthumously 2015), novel

See also

• African American literature

References

External links

• 1968 TV interview with Iceberg Slim on YouTube